The invention relates to a pharmacy system for prescribing and delivering medicaments to a patient.
Distribution of medicaments prescribed by a doctor generally takes place via a pharmacy. It concerns a labor-intensive process which is carried out at least substantially manually. In this process, a doctor writes out a prescription on a sheet of paper with which a patient can then go to a pharmacy in order to collect the relevant medicament. However, written prescriptions are not always clear, which involves the risk that errors are made in the pharmacy. Also, the selection of medicaments (order picking) may give rise to errors being made.
The writing of a prescription belongs to the medical responsibility, while the pharmacist is by law charged with the duty of checking the prescription for unclarities and inaccuracies and to contact the doctor hereabout. For this reason, the total process of describing by the doctor and delivering by the pharmacist is generally carried out separately.
Accordingly, the law in for instance the Netherlands requires a separation between the prescribing and delivering of medicaments. Prescribing is reserved for the doctor and delivering is reserved for the pharmacist. From the prescription, the pharmacist carries out a number of checks, after which the medicaments are selected, labelled and delivered.